Philadelphia Retrospective

Making our way through Chicago and Madison, we finally landed in Ann Arbor to meetup with Prof. Vikram Gavini...

Upon return from Ann Arbor, I took the train to Boston to visit another friend... Long story.. little time..

A hike in the New Hampshire hills was perfect Fall-time activity..

I cannot even remember when this was taken.. probably a quick meet-and-greet on the way back from NJ with a stopover in Princeton...

Taken just on the Ben Franklin Parkway just before the advent of winter... The air turns chilly and crisp.. and its a delight to walk around and photograph the changing urban foliage..

A bunch of AID marathon runners made their way through Philly...

The Zoo Balloon floats in the perky air of early winter.. while the red berries sprout all over the bushes...

A winter hike in the hunting lands along the Susquehanna river... brought to you be Penn Outdoors.. The club was pretty good at ferreting our wild and crazy hikes.. this time we almosts got shot by hunters mistaking us for deer... Way to go :P

The New Year's Mummer's Parade is a very popular Philadelphia event.. This is probably the first time I've ventured this south along Broad Street and returned unscathed... :P

Around this time, I realized I needed to get a move on my thesis.. It was clearly foundering...

The mild 2008 winter provided a perfect opportunity to get things back on track...

Problems piled higher and deeper.. But I had to make sense of the scope of the thesis and attack the problem systematically..

A mid-winter break in India that February that year kept me away from the snowy weather.. And also provided the perfect opportunity to recharge, rejuvenate and start the final PhD attack afresh..

A trip home is incomplete withot a hike to Sinhagad...

This is how our lab looks with LEGO bricks... the only difference with the real lab is that we hardly ever work in it... we're pretty lazy graduate students..

During the lab dedication ceremony, Rafi entertains the kids... It is 2 girls and 1 boy... just to cliarify :P

When the wintry weather starts to dissipate, an early-spring camping trip with Penn Outdoors can be a lot of fun.. Promised Land State Park.. turned out to be somewhat noisy (nearby highway) and bitter cold as well...

FCCM was in Stanford that year (2008).. And I fell in love with the campus.. The conference on the other hand was pretty dissapointing...

Another hike out in the hills with the Penn Outdoors club..

All cousins ganged up in Philadelphia in the spring of 2008... Much fun it was!

Early summer that year, a bunch of us went biking along the Schuylkill and Wissahickon valleys to enjoy the gorgeous summer weather... It was an entertaining ride.. Here were were in historic Rittenhouse village nested in the Wissahickon valley...

Late-evening rainstorms enliven the atmosphere in Philadelphia throughout the summer... A particularly ominous cloud configuration...

I made another trip back to Caltech for a friends graduation... Construction workers were busy building the new CS department at Caltech.. A couple of years later it would be finished and I would defend in there...

A gorgeous view of the San Gabriel mountain from the Milikan library at Caltech... The San Gabriels were easily one fo the best things to happen to this region after Caltech. I had been on many a hike in those mountains... Later in 2010, a massive fire will burn down a significant portion of the hillside and along with it the memories of a scrubby landscape.. it will be several years before the hills restore...

Photographing the Philadelphia skyline continued to remain a hobby... One night I got lucky with a lightning strike..

Another time, a surreal orange sunset and rainbow across the Philadelphia skyline would make for an interesting picture..

Mosholu.. the boat restaurant in the Delaware... Many wild drunk Penn grads would be found here... Unfortunately, I never did make it there...

From the archives: When we bought some new equipment into the lab, a monster was accidently set loose...

Vinayak and Bhavna were regular company during the first few years in Philadelphia.. Here we're out bowling in downtown Philadelphia..

I also enojyed taking advantage of the relatively decent food scene in the city.. Here, I'm peering out of a porthole at Continental in downtown Philly..